Tentativas de suicídio na adolescência: atribuindo sentidos e significados

Abstract

The herein dissertation aimed at performing an approximation of the senses and meanings attributed to the suicide trials, in the teenager’s perspective which had tried, from their families, and from other close young people. The adolescence is understood as a time of suspension, a passage, which demands an intense psychic care. While it ideally would be a happy period, it is true to some extent. However, a few adolescents amidst the turbulence brought by this passage are invaded by diffuse suffering, a certain melancholy dose, which unveils feelings of emptiness, sadness, angst and corrode their existences. And, when this intense suffering is too much to bear, they find several ways of signifying it on their own body. Self-harm, selfdestructive acts, risky behavior, the games that toy with their lives, the defying conducts that near them dangerously to death, constitute the background and surface the ways teenagers suffer nowadays. Still, when desperation takes over and the impulse is overwhelming, they resort to life ending trials and fantasize death in the hopes of ending the pain. In this context, a qualitative research was conducted, based in the clinic-quantitative method of Turato (2013), outlining studies of multiple cases (Yin, 2001). Cases of 4 adolescents who tried suicide between 2019 and 2020 were analyzed, including their families and other affectively close young people. For data collection, semi structured interviews were applied, with guiding axes, and the analysis of the data was performed by the content analysis method proposed by Bardin (1977). As highlighted main results, adolescents are presented as silent, lonely people with several bound ruptures within the family, concrete and symbolic losses of their parents, affective abandonment, lack of embracing and hearing and validation spaces for their suffering. Other than this, the suicide trials reveal the outlines of a bewildering angst, helplessness, the lack of affection, sustainability and anchorage, as well as an unbearable psychic pain which overflows into self-harming acts, representing a risk to themselves. There is an implicit communication within this act, comprehended as a cry for help and, which cannot be silenced. It was possible toalso comprehend a few nuances and complexities from the suicidal behavior in the adolescence, under the view of psychology, that may contribute to prevention actions based on the hearing and embracing of the psychic pain, in the maintenance and in the strengthening of the affective bonds among parents and children as well as the parental psycho-education. In this light, it is evidenced the urgency of programs of mental health promotion as well as actions that rescue the adolescents urge for life, with special attention to those who go through situations that favor the risk of suicide. Also, it is fundamental to sensitize, rescue the empathy, rupture silence pacts and raise awareness surrounding the suicidal behavior in the adolescence.